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the return of a kind of clericalism, always intent on building borders, “regulating” the lives of people through imposed prerequisites and prohibitions that make our daily lives, already difficult, even harder.
“God forgives not with a decree but with a caress.”
forgives by caressing the wounds of our sins.”
“Mercy,”
does not erase sins.”
What erases sins “is God’s forgiveness.”
mercy is the way in which Go...
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Jesus is a confessor. He does not humiliate
“The medicine is there, the healing is there—if only we take a small step toward God.” After reading the text, he called me and asked me to add “or even just the desire to take that step.”
He overlooks no possibility, no matter how small,
are you sorry that you are not sorry?”
Things come to me by themselves, they are the ways of the Lord, and they are preserved in prayer.
I am inclined never to trust my first reaction to an idea or to a proposal that is made to me. I never trust myself in part because my first reaction is usually wrong. I have learned to wait, to trust in the Lord, to ask for his help, so I can discern better and receive guidance.
as I said, and I am ever more convinced of it, this is a kairós, our era is a kairós of mercy, an opportune time.
Kairos (καιρός) is an ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment (the 'supreme moment').
when I was in Buenos Aires, I specifically recall a roundtable discussion with theologians. The topic was what the Pope could do to bring people closer together; we were faced with so many problems that there seemed to be no solution. One of the participants suggested “a Holy Year of forgiveness.” This idea stayed with me.
the decision came through prayer, through reflection on the teachings and declarations of the Popes who preceded me, and by thinking of the Church as a field hospital, where treatment is given above all to those who are most wounded.
“mercy” derives from misericordis, which means opening one’s heart to wretchedness.
Do you remember your first experience of mercy as a child?
Ezekiel teaches us to be ashamed, it shows us how to feel shame: with all our history of wretchedness
Ibarra was originally from Corrientes but was in Buenos Aires to receive treatment for leukemia. He died the following year. I still remember how when I got home, after his funeral and burial, I felt as though I had been abandoned. And I cried a lot that night, really a lot, and hid in my room. Why? Because I had lost a person who helped me feel the mercy of God, a person who helped me understand the expression miserando atque eligendo, an expression I didn’t know at the time but which I would eventually choose as my episcopal motto.
" ... and, through the act of mercy-ing him and calling him, said, 'follow me.'"
WHEN you think of merciful priests whom you have met or who have inspired you, who comes to mind?
“I need your help. I always have so many people at the confessional, people of all walks of life, some humble and some less humble, but many priests too….I forgive a lot and sometimes I have doubts, I wonder if I have forgiven too much.” We talked about mercy and I asked him what he did when he had those doubts. This is what he said: “I go to our chapel and stand in front of the tabernacle and say to Jesus: ‘Lord, forgive me if I have forgiven too much. But you’re the one who gave me the bad example!’
St. Leopold Mandić, O.F.M. Cap. (also known as Leopold of Castelnuovo), (12 May 1866 – 30 July 1942), was a Croatian Capuchin friar and Catholic priest,[1] who suffered from disabilities that would plague his speech and stature. He developed tremendous spiritual strength in spite of his disabilities and became extremely popular in his ministry as a confessor, often spending 12-15 hours in the confessional.[2]
Although Mandić wanted to be a missionary in Eastern Europe, he spent almost all his adult life in Italy, living in Padua from 1906 until his death. He also spent one year in an Italian prison during World War I, since he would not renounce his Croatian nationality. He also dreamed unceasingly about reuniting the Catholic and Orthodox churches and going to the Orient. He became known as Apostle of Confession and Apostle of Unity. He made a famous prayer that is the forerunner of today's ecumenism.[citation needed]
in your opinion, is humanity so in need of mercy? Because humanity is wounded, deeply wounded. Either it does not know how to cure its wounds or it believes that it’s not possible to cure them. And it’s not just a question of social ills or people wounded by poverty, social exclusion, or one of the many slaveries of the third millennium. Relativism wounds people too: all things seem equal, all things appear the same. Humanity needs mercy and compassion. Pius XII, more than half a century ago, said that the tragedy of our age was that it had lost its sense of sin, the awareness of
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We need to ask ourselves why today so many people, men and women, young and old, of every social class, go to psychics and fortune-tellers. Cardinal Giacomo Biffi used to quote these words by the English writer G. K. Chesterton: “When Man ceases to worship God he does not worship nothing but worships everything.”
Mostly, people are looking for someone to listen to them. Someone willing to grant them time, to listen to their dramas and difficulties. This is what I call the “apostolate of the ear,”
The love of God exists even for those who are not disposed to receive it: that man, that woman, that boy, or that girl—they are all loved by God, they are sought out by God, they are in need of blessing. Be tender with these people. Do not push them away. People are suffering.
I have a niece who was married to a man in a civil wedding before he received the annulment of his previous marriage. They wanted to get married, they loved each other, they wanted children, and they had three. The judge had even awarded him custody of the children from his first marriage. This man was so religious that every Sunday, when he went to Mass, he went to the confessional and said to the priest, “I know you can’t absolve me but I have sinned by doing this and that, please give me a blessing.” This is a religiously mature man.
An example of meeting them with mercy (broadly defined) where they are.
WHY is it important to go to confession? You were the first Pope to give confession publicly during the penitential liturgy in St. Peter’s….Isn’t it enough to repent and ask for forgiveness on one’s own, and sort things out with God alone?
Jesus said to his apostles: “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (John
If you are not capable of talking to your brother about your mistakes, you can be sure that you can’t talk about them with God, either, and therefore you end up confessing into the mirror, to yourself.
1.
We are social beings, and forgiveness has a social implication; my sin wounds mankind, my brothers and sisters, and society as a whole.
2.
Confessing to a priest is a way of putting my life into the hands and heart of someone else, someone who in that moment acts in the name of Jesus.
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It’s a way to be real and authentic: we face the facts by looking at another person and not in the mirror.
4.
There is objectivity in this gesture of genuflection before the priest; it becomes the vehicle through which grace reaches and heals me.
the tradition of Eastern churches, where the confessor welcomes the penitent by putting his stole over the penitent’s head and an arm around his shoulder, as if embracing him.
in confession, but there is something greater than judgment that comes into play. It is being face-to-face with someone who acts in persona Christi to welcome and forgive you. It is an encounter with mercy.
in the parish church of St. Anna, on March 17, 2013, you spoke of the man who said: “Oh, Father, I have done some terrible things!” to which you replied, “Go to Jesus, he forgives and forgets everything.” In that same homily you reminded us that God never tires of forgiving. A bit later, during the Angelus, you reminded us of another episode, the one of the old lady who said to you as she confessed that without the mercy of God, the world would not exist. I remember that episode very well; it is fixed in my memory. I can see her in front of me now. She was an elderly lady, small,
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the lady appeared, elderly and humble. I turned toward her and called her abuela, grandmother, as we do in Argentina. “Abuela, do you want to confess?” “Yes,” she replied. And since I was ready to leave, I said: “But if you have no sins…” Her answer was swift and immediate: “We all have sins.” “But maybe the Lord can’t forgive them,” I said. “The Lord forgives everything.” “How do you know?” “If the Lord didn’t forgive everything, our world would not exist.” It was an example of the faith of simple people who are imbued with knowledge even if they have never studied theology.
YOU once said that the confessional should not be a “dry cleaner.” What does that mean?
It was an example, an image to explain the hypocrisy of those who believe that sin is a stain, only a stain, something that you can have dry-cleaned so that everything goes back to normal. The way you take a jacket or dress to have a stain removed: you put it in the wash and that’s it. But sin is more than a stain. Sin is a wound; it needs to be treated, healed.
This is why I used that expression: I was trying to explain that going to confession is not like taking your clothes to the dry cleaner.
WHAT do you need in order to obtain mercy? Is it necessary to have a certain predisposition?
You need to get up again, to be able to resume your path.
Your heart must be crushed. Are you afraid that it might perish so? From the mouth of the Psalmist comes this reply: A clean heart create for me, God (Psalm 51:12). The impure heart must be destroyed so that the pure one may be created. We should be displeased with ourselves when we commit sin,
HOW do we recognize that we ourselves are sinners? What would you say to someone who doesn’t feel like one? I would advise him to ask for the grace of feeling like one! Yes, because even recognizing oneself as a sinner is a
Without that grace, the most one can say is: I am limited, I have my limits, these are my mistakes. But recognizing oneself as a sinner is something else. It means standing in front of God, who is our everything, and presenting him with our selves, which are our nothing. Our miseries, our sins. What we need to ask for is truly an act of grace.
Cf. Fervent Disciple and Into His Likeness
DON Luigi Giussani used to quote this example from Bruce Marshall’s novel To Every Man a Penny. The protagonist of the novel, the abbot Father Gaston, needs to hear the confession of a young German soldier whom the French partisans are about to sentence to death. The soldier confesses his love of women and the numerous amorous adventures he has had. The young priest explains that he has to repent to obtain forgiveness and absolution. The soldier answers, “How can I repent? It was something that I enjoyed, and if I had the chance I would do it again, even now. How can I repent?” Father Gaston,
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He does not want anyone to be lost. His mercy is infinitely greater than our sins, his medicine is infinitely stronger than our illnesses that he has to heal. There’s a Preface to the Ambrosian Rite that says: “You bent down over our wounds and healed us, giving us a medicine stronger than our afflictions, a mercy greater than our fault.
the Lord precedes us, he anticipates us. I believe the same can be said for his divine mercy, which heals our wounds; he anticipates our need for it.
